Blue Lips
by ohyellowbird
Summary: Winter takes Los Angeles early. By mid-October shorts have all but disappeared, traded in for woolen coats and boots to withstand the rain. / AU where Tate is alive and Violet is dead.


**A/N: **Welp, it's that time again. Another little nothing fic from me. I am about to move and get a new job and have been feeling down and also am AMPED for autumn, so I wrote a thing!

In this AU, Tate is alive and Violet is dead.

* * *

Winter takes Los Angeles early. By mid-October shorts have all but disappeared, traded in for woolen coats and boots to withstand the rain.

Tate wakes Thursday morning to the morse code of hail against his bedroom window. Everything looks hazy in the weak light of 6AM. His alarm clock will be silent for another half hour, but wound up in blankets with the sound of rain outside, he reaches to yank the plug on it. Fuck going to class today.

Constance has been on vacation in Aruba with that dickweed Larry for almost a week - no witnesses.

The next time he opens his eyes, his phone says 10:23AM. The rain hasn't stopped. Stumbling into sweatpants and a sweater, he finds a mug of warm coffee waiting in the kitchen. "Thank you, Nora," he calls out into the empty room, taking a slow pull before rounding the kitchen island to pop some bread into the toaster. There's strawberry jam in the fridge, but Tate prefers butter.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes with texts from people who must have just noticed he isn't at school.

He leaves a single piece of toast slathered in jam on a plate next to a mug of hot cocoa made on the stove, and then wanders back up to his room.

For the first time in, he can't remember, Tate thinks about taking a bath. It's drafty as hell in a house this massive; every place he isn't covered stings from the cold. Instead he pulls down most of the blankets from his bed and starts a fire downstairs, watching cartoons and game shows inside a crocheted cocoon. Nothing keeps his broken record of a mind off of _her_, but it's nice. He falls asleep again and wakes up to embers and daytime talk shows - at school, lunch is just ending. Economics starts in ten minutes.

Peeling out of buried warmth is hard, but eventually he makes it back to his room, jumps into his corduroys from the day before that already hold his wallet and keys and heads for the door.

The streets are mostly empty. The traffic is slow.

A friend from track gets his text and they meet for burgers at a diner near Westfield. Halloween is going to be fucking insane, his friend promises, says Tate can bring whoever he wants. The school's quarterback is throwing a party at his parent's beach house in Malibu.

"I bet anything it's gonna fucking rain, dude."

"Who gives a shit? Enough alcohol and we can rage through a hurricane." He has a point.

After lunch, the rain gives way to drizzle and Tate bums around town a little, hits up a few thrift stores and the grocery outlet that carries the ramen he likes.

Violet is standing soaked through on the porch in bare feet when he gets home.

"Violet?" Seeing her leaves him frozen by his open trunk for a minute. The rain's kicked back on and is falling in sheets.

She steps aside to let him pass by with the bags from his car but doesn't say anything or follow.

He meets her back on the porch with empty arms. "What are you doing out here?"

They haven't spoken in weeks, another stupid fight about his mom and the girls at school. She's bitter and he gets it; stir crazy wouldn't even begin to cover how she must feel trapped in his house.

Her jaw is clamped shut against chattering. She's swimming in wet clothes, water beaded all over her face and along the wide patch of skin where the collar of her shirt has stretched low.

"What are you doing?" he asks again, and Violet just stares. Another minute out in the rain and he wants to shake a response out of her. Instead he bends to pick her up and carries her in, kicking the door shut with the heel of his shoe.

She doesn't fuss or help, dead weight in his arms.

He sets her down in the kitchen where she can drip on tile.

"This is just fucking silly," Tate huffs, and without a peep from her, starts peeling Violet out of her clothes. Her long-sleeved shirt is first and then her pants that have become suctioned to her legs. Underneath it all, in just a tiny pair of underwear, Violet's skin is frozen. Her lips are blue.

Tate wants to corral her into his room and spend hours under the covers with her, defrosting her back into someone happy if she'd let him.

He toes her wet clothes out of the way (Moira is going to have a shit fit later) and turns to dig through the bags he'd brought in. Wordlessly, he produces a cable knit sweater in burgundy and a pair of black wintery leggings that looks knitted too.

Violet watches Tate tear the tags with his teeth and lifts her arms when he's ready. With a steadying hand on his shoulder, she steps into the thick leggings next. Everything fits just right, the sweater roomy the way she likes.

"Thanks for the breakfast this morning."

Tate balls up the empty bag and tosses it, biting down his smile at hearing her speak. "I was going to make waffles but we don't have any eggs."

"Yeah. Elizabeth is fucking obsessed with omelettes right now, that cunt," Violet says, stepping up to the counter so she can nose through the other things Tate brought home: the aforementioned eggs, cookie mix, cereal, milk, ramen, a buttondown shirt in off-white, two knit caps, pumpkins.

"Pumpkins?"

Tate nods, carefully lifting them both from their bags. The stems prickle. Violet runs her finger down the lengths of both, sucks it into her mouth after. "Ow."

After putting the groceries away, Tate sends Violet upstairs. "Go put on some socks," he tells her, waving the cream-colored shirt at her when she almost forgets to take it up too. All the girls at school are wearing collared shirts underneath their sweaters and cardigans. He doesn't know, maybe Violet might like that too.

They meet back in the kitchen and sit side by side on high stools where newspaper has been laid out as well as a few markers and knives.

"What are you going to make?" Tate asks, turning his own pumpkin each way, deciding where to put its face.

Violet stabs into the top of hers, moves her hand in a wide circle. "I dunno," she says, ripping off the stem part and reaching in to scoop out guts. She sits close, and after awhile puts her feet on Tate's calf, absently pulls at the wrinkles of his pants with her toes. It's nearly dark out by the time they're finished.

Tate ends up with a run-of-the-mill jack o' lantern face, but Violet's is something more abstract, shapes and mouths cut through the pumpkin's skin. After, they chuck the mess and go about finding candles. By nightfall their art projects are out glowing on the front porch just out of the rain's reach.

"Why didn't you go to school today?" Violet asks, watching Tate stir a pot of soup. Her hands are curled into the ends of the sweater he got her. Her hair is almost dry.

Tate gets two bowls out of the dishwasher and shrugs, lets Violet dish up first. "I don't know. Just felt like a day to be home I guess."

Violet nods. When dinner's through she helps him carry the blankets from the couch back up to his room.

There's a beat of silence then where Tate is terrified that this is the end of the day, that she'll dump the pile on his bed and leave, that he won't see her again for another week. But she doesn't leave. She jumps into the blankets like they were leaves and reaches for Tate. "It's just hard," she says by way of forgiveness and he agrees. It is hard, harder for her, being cooped up here while he has free reign of the world and his whole life ahead of him.

He crawls over the end of the bed and lets her squirm into his arms, put her face right against his throat. "I know."

Every part of him settles at having her here again, her lips on his neck and her hands underneath the hem of his sweater.

They weigh themselves down with blankets and outside, it storms.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for reading. Love you guys! Can't wait for all the fic the new season will bring about! xx


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